A01=Alain Mabanckou
Africa
Author_Alain Mabanckou
Category=FBA
Category=FYT
Comedy
Congo
eq_bestseller
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_nobargain
Fiction
French
International
Man Booker International
Translation
Product details
- ISBN 9781781256749
- Weight: 151g
- Dimensions: 128 x 196mm
- Publication Date: 07 Sep 2017
- Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2017
It's 1970, and in the People's Republic of Congo a Marxist-Leninist revolution is ushering in a new age. But over at the orphanage on the outskirts of Pointe-Noire where young Moses has grown up, the revolution has only strengthened the reign of terror of Dieudonné Ngoulmoumako, the institution's corrupt director.
So Moses escapes to Pointe-Noire, where he finds a home with a larcenous band of Congolese Merry Men and among the Zairian prostitutes of the Trois-Cents quarter. But the authorities won't leave Moses in peace, and intervene to chase both the Merry Men and the Trois-Cents girls out of town. All this injustice pushes poor Moses over the edge. Could he really be the Robin Hood of the Congo? Or is he just losing his marbles?
Black Moses is a larger-than-life comic tale of a young man obsessed with helping the helpless in an unjust world. It is also a vital new extension of Mabanckou's extraordinary, interlinked body of work dedicated to his native Congo, and confirms his status as one of our great storytellers.
Alain Mabanckou was born in 1966 in Congo and currently lives in Los Angeles, where he teaches literature at UCLA. His five previous novels African Psycho, Memoirs of a Porcupine, Broken Glass, Black Bazaar and Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty - the latter a fictionalised retelling of Mabanckou's own childhood in Congo - are all published by Serpent's Tail. Among his many honours are the Académie Française's Grand Prix de literature, awarded in recognition of his entire literary career, and the 2016 French Voices Award for The Lights of Pointe-Noire, which was described by Salman Rushdie as 'a beautiful book'. Mabanckou is a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur, was a finalist for the 2015 Man Booker International Prize and has featured on Vanity Fair's list of France's fifty most influential people.
